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4.3: Building the Clawbot

There are 16 design videos to walk the student through the assembly and animation of the Clawbot. Click on each video to review the content. Pause, rewind, fast forward and stop features are available as the student reviews the content. It is expected that the students have a basic working knowledge of Autodesk Inventor and have viewed the videos in 4.2: Basic Inventor Command Overview.

The workflow in these videos includes:

Assembling the base frame using simple pick and place techniques

Placing gears and wheels

Inserting motors

Aligning the gears so that they drive the other gears and wheels correctly

Using Inventor Studio to create rendered images and an animation of your robot design

In this video, all the key phases for modeling a VEX Clawbot robot in Autodesk Inventor software will be reviewed. Modeling the robot in Autodesk Inventor consists of assembling parts from the virtual kit of parts library. The key phases in the required workflow are reviewed in this overview video.

In this video, students will learn how to use Autodesk Inventor project files to organize file location. An overview of project files and how to set the active project file is shown. The completed robot is opened in Autodesk Inventor. With the file opened, the view manipulation tools are demonstrated. Note that later versions of Inventor will have a slightly different opening screen.

Note: The files required for this activity must be downloaded, and data sets in imperial and metric units are available. The data sets provided will work for Inventor version 2013 onward. Download and unzip these files and save them into a new project folder called ‘Clawbot.’

In this video, students learn that the structural frame members have square holes that have to be aligned correctly. Assembling the parts using the iMates attached to each hole simplifies the process by reducing the number of clicks required. This workflow enables you to snap each part into its correct location.

Note: A metric assembly template can be started by selecting the metric template folder.

In later versions of Autodesk Inventor, the first component inserted is not automatically grounded unless you insert by positioning with the Right mouse button and selecting the 'PlaceGrounded at origin' option. Also note in later versions of Inventor in order to view the iMate you have to hold the ALT button, select the iMate and drag the mouse slightly to display.

In this video, students use standard parts to assemble the frame. Autodesk Inventor provides standard parts such as nuts, bolts, and washers. They can be placed in an assembly using Content Center. In this project, the standard parts are provided and are constrained to the base frame using the iMate workflow used previously.

Note: The template check shown when creating the subassembly in the video is for an Imperial template; note there is a metric equivalent found in the metric folder.

In this video, students add the drive shafts and collars to the base frame assembly. The drive shafts are inserted into the bearing flats. Collars are added to the ends of the shaft to hold the shaft in place.

In this video, students add a wheel to the Clawbot. The wheel assembly consists of a 60 tooth gear, spacer, 4-inch wheel and a collar. These parts are placed in the assembly and constrained using various workflows. Constraints are placed between each part to make sure that they rotate correctly.

In this video, students simplify the placement of wheel parts by creating a subassembly. To reduce the time required to create a wheel assembly, the parts are demoted into a subassembly. With the wheels in place, a 60-tooth gear is added between the wheels, and motion constraints are added to the gears.

Note: The template check shown when creating the subassembly in the video is for an Imperial template; note there is a metric equivalent found in the metric folder. The metric equivalents of the Imperial offsets shown are -0.375" = -9.5mm and -0.875" = -22mm.

In this video, students use work planes to align the gear teeth. To correctly align the gear teeth, work planes are created through the center of the teeth or a gap between the teeth. These work planes can be used to align the teeth by constraining the work planes to each other.

In this video, students build the claw arm drivetrain using gears, shafts, and shaft collars. The claw arm drivetrain is assembled using 84 tooth gears, 12 tooth gears, shafts, and shaft collars. The gears are aligned using work planes like the wheel drivetrain.

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